Games
are among the most popular and profitable types of mobile applications.
New games are developed and released every day on Google Play and other
app marketplaces and once in a while we also come across a Flappy
Bird like wonder story. This is a roundup of some of the best tutorials
available online on Andorid game development that can be useful to
developers in learning how to develop games for Android. Note that this
list doesn’t cover any specific game engine or game creation tool,
(which will be covered in later posts) but concentrates mainly on game
development with Canvas/Open GL.
This
set of tutorials is perhaps one of the most popular sources for
learning Android game development. The comprehensive series of tutorials
is also nicely organized into different units and sections. If you are a
complete beginner to Java and Android you can start following the
series right from Unit 1, titled “Beginning Java” and which essentially
deals with various Java concepts from basics to advanced. Unit 2 & 3
covers various aspects of creating a game and lays down the foundation
of gaming concepts (you can skip this too if you have created a game in
Java before and are familiar with game development concepts). Unit 4
exclusively deals with Android game development and covers a wide range
of topics right from setting up a development environment to creating
your Android game.
A
tutorial in five parts. First part discusses how to create a drawing
surface and a framework for the game, second part covers the basics of
how to load and display sprites when developing an Android game, the
third installment of the tutorial deals with sprite animations, the
fourth part walks you through the concept of collision detection while
the final installment of the tutorial shows how to derive input from a
user and how to use the input to influence the on-screen action (user
input). The tutorial linked here is the final installment of the
tutorials as it contains the links to all the previous parts. You can
also download the project covered in the tutorial and import it into
Eclipse.
OpenGL
ES (OpenGL for Embedded Systems) is an implementation of OpenGL for
embedded devices. Android features good support for OpenGL ES and it is
also widely used in developing Android games. This tutorial shows how to
get started with OpenGL ES 2.0 for Android.
These
series of tutorials walks you through the process of creating a simple
2-dimensional game engine for Android from scratch. During the course of
development you will learn about design decisions and understand how
each component works in a game engine. The series starts with a detailed
introduction to OpenGL ES and then progresses to other topics such as
setting up your development environment, concepts related to game
engine, stage, scenes, sprites, primitive drawing, textures etc.
You
can draw 2D objects in Android either on a View or with a Canvas. If
you are drawing objects that need to be be redrawn regularly (which is
the case in games) Canvas is the better solution. This tutorials walks
you through the process of drawing a 2D object with a Canvas and also
shows how to use a secondary thread to perform the drawing for better
performance.
Another
multi-part tutorial on Android game development. This series walks you
through the process of developing a hangman game for Android and
discusses the core game development concepts right from basics such as
setting up your project to developing the user interface and user
interaction. The tutorial also deals with topics such as adapters, XML
resources, action bar etc. You can also download the source code of the
project developed in the course of the tutorial.
A
lengthy series of Android game development tutorials that is somewhat
outdated but useful nonetheless. The series guides you through the
process of developing an Android game right from the conception of the
game idea to its execution. You will learn important game development
concepts such as a basic game architecture, game loop, sprite animation,
particle explosion, bitmap fonts, moving images on screen, MVC pattern,
OpenGL ES, OpenGL texture mapping, collision detection etc. The
tutorials are also accompanied with relevant illustrations and source
code. You can also download the source code and the eclipse project.
This
section of the Android documentation is a must read for developers
getting started with OpenGL ES in Android. It walks you through the
basics of developing applications using OpenGL and covers topics such
as setup, drawing objects, moving drawn elements and responding to touch
input. The example code uses the OpenGL ES 2.0 APIs. It is divided
into several sections, each one of which discusses a different aspect of
working with OpenGL.
Building an OpenGL ES Environment, which
starts the series shows you how to create a view container for OpenGL
ES while the next couple of sections guide you through the basics of how
to define and draw OpenGL shapes in your application. The rest of the
documentation covers various other important topics such as how to use
projection and camera views to get a new perspective on your drawn
objects, how to do basic movement and animation of drawn objects, basic
interaction with OpenGL graphics etc.
A
series of tutorials on OpenGL ES 2.0 that specifically focuses on the
2D aspects of OpenGL ES 2.0 for Android. The tutorials are descriptive
and include example source code, which are also available for download.
The tutorials cover topics starting from how to render a triangle (first
part) to rendering an image, handling input, transforming images, the
OpenGL texture system, screens and dimensions etc.
Google
Play game services lets you create great game experiences by helping
you implement achievement, leaderboards, and real-time multiplaying
capability to your game. These elements greatly enhance the game
experience for the user/player. A leaderboard allows the players to
compare their scores with other players or friends, rewards and
achievements encourage better user engagement and multiplayer capability
provides a competitive and cooperative experience often using social
platforms. In short, you can add a lot to your game experience by
utilizing the Google Play Game Services. This official documentation
guides you through the basics of how to get started with Google Play
Game Services.
